Australia

-> ALT: a Poster incl a picture of David with a x drawn over his mouth.

MISSING

THE LONELY WARRIOR

WANTED

FOR HUNTING GENERALS

WHISTLEBLOWERS SHOULD GET REWARDS NOT JAIL

WHERE'S HURLEY?

14TH MAY 2024 SUPREME COURT ACT

Hey guys and girls. We don't have a health and fitness community. I was thinking of starting one where we can post achievements, fitness videos, questions etc. Would anyone be interested?

-> Alt text:

David vs Goliath in a nutshell:

Government: 'he stole [newspeak for copied] information but we can't tell you what it is, so we took it off his lawyers and put it in a safe. We'll all refer to it as the docs in the safe.'

Judiciary: 'oh, ok, np!'

Defence Department Whistleblower: 'Those docs showed what I believed to be leadership misconduct. I have no defence now; I plead guilty.'

6 months later...

Government: 'Please jail him with non-parole period'

Judiciary: 'lemme think about this for another week 🤔'

-> end alt-text

-> https://twitter.com/BeeDemocracy/status/1787773353438413019

A Chinese fighter jet endangered an Australian military helicopter during an "unsafe" and "unacceptable" confrontation over the Yellow Sea, Australia said on Monday.

The Chinese air force J-10 jet dropped flares above and several hundred meters ahead of an Australian MH60R Seahawk helicopter which was on a routine flight on Saturday in the Yellow Sea as part of an operation to enforce sanctions against North Korea, Defence Minister Richard Marles said in a statement.

The helicopter, flying from destroyer HMAS Hobart, dodged the flares, but the possible impact would have been "significant".

"This is a very serious incident, it was unsafe and it is completely unacceptable," he said.

"We have formally expressed our concerns about this incident, and formally expressed that this was both unsafe and unprofessional."

The confrontation put the aircraft and those on board at risk, although no one was hurt, the Department of Defence said in a separate statement.

This is the second such incident in six months to mar what has otherwise been a growing rapprochement between the two countries after years of strained relations and trade disputes.

Australia said in November a Chinese naval vessel injured some of its divers in Japanese waters using an underwater sonar. China denied it had used its sonar, however Australia rejected the explanation.

HMAS Hobart continues to operate in the area despite Saturday's confrontation, Marles said. Australia has been participating in missions to enforce sanctions against North Korea in the region since 2018.

China's Ministry of Defence did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

What the absolute fuck? Has anyone else seen this ad play on SBS, how can they advertise for such a piece of shit to spread his brand of hate here.

I saw that they weren't going to go ahead last year, but now apparently there will be a pilot.

I've had YouTube Music since it was Google Music, but the price has recently doubled and at the same time I've started noticing my "Radio" keeps playing the same dozen songs over and over again. Started to feel like I was listening to Triple M.

Yesterday was the final straw as every song played on repeat until you manually skipped which is just... wtf? How does that even happen?

I have jumped on to Spotify for the minute, but find it is too heavily focused on "pop" music - it seems to choose songs that are broadly more popular, but aren't really the same as what I'm choosing to play. I somehow always end up back with top 50 chart artists in the queue, even if I started on like bluegrass or hillbilly or something. Also if I select a song or artist and choose "Radio", it always the same 50 songs and then just stops which doesn't seem like what "Radio" should be at all.

What other options are there that are accessible from Australia, and preferably have a decent amount of Australian local content? I have zero interests in podcasts being jammed in, I just want music. And preferably music that I can just say "play stuff that sounds like this" and it'll go on a deep dive to focus on things I haven't heard before.

Critical:

• No ads
• Able to actually choose the music and skip and what not, so not Sirius or similar
• Good catalogue of Australian artists
• Android and Desktop clients
• "Family" plan or similar for 2 people

Budget not really an issue.

Qantas is investigating reports of customers having access to other passengers' information on their app.

In a statement issued this morning, the airline said it would provide more information as soon as possible.

"Qantas is investigating reports of an issue impacting the Qantas app this morning," a spokesperson for their airline said.

The scale of the issue has not yet been confirmed.

Luckily I can't afford to travel anywhere so this won't affect me, but probably will others.

UQ students standing in solidarity with Palestine

UQ has a very strong relationship with US weapons manufacturer Boeing. Students are protesting this relationship, as well as showing general support for Palestinians, by staging a camp-in on campus.

Some photos I took of the camp as I walked past them this morning.

edit: 2nd & 3rd images linked for Lemmy:

https://cdn.masto.host/twitsocial/media_attachments/files/112/362/144/247/591/418/original/70aa8cf3d02f9d49.jpg

https://cdn.masto.host/twitsocial/media_attachments/files/112/362/144/512/785/162/original/bea15f2b29263696.jpg

Someone else feel free to repost or put them inline for Lemmings' convience.

@australia

At the same time, the government will process faster proposals in non-sensitive areas from known investors with a good compliance record.

Hi all, there is a new e-petition started by the guys at Stop Killing Games. This has been started, in no small part, thanks to Ubisoft making the game "The Crew" unplayable for all owners world wide.

Excerpt from their website:

An increasing number of videogames are sold as goods, but designed to be completely unplayable for everyone as soon as support ends. The legality of this practice is untested worldwide, and many governments do not have clear laws regarding these actions. It is our goal to have authorities examine this behavior and hopefully end it, as it is an assault on both consumer rights and preservation of media.

Petition Request:

• Require software sold in Australia to remain in a functional state after the end of the product’s support period, continuing to operate without any intervention from the publisher.
• Require publishers selling additional features/assets for their software to leave said software in a functional state after the end of the product’s support period, so customers can continue to utilise features/assets they purchased without any intervention from the publisher.
• Establish that these requirements supercede software End-User License Agreements, as many such licenses attempt to strip customers’ right to ownership over their purchased goods, as guaranteed under schedule 2 of the Competition and Consumer Act 2010.

Obviously, if you own "The Crew", you can go right to ACCC or your states/territory consumer protection body to make a complaint. The website even has a guide to file a complaint to the ACCC.

Video from the guy who is starting the campaign: The largest campaign ever to stop publishers destroying games.

If you feel strongly enough on this issue, please go ahead and sign the petition. I think it would be great if the government could get their eyes on this and make some legislation around this so game publishers can't weasel their way out of us owning our purchased game software.

Just look at Valve, they were pretty much forced to make a refund policy for us.

The e-petition closes on the 20th of May at midnight. Thanks for your time 😀

The report found a key cause of the outage was a problem with Optus's 3G network.

During the outage, Optus's 4G and 5G towers shut down, meaning emergency calls were diverted to other network's towers — known as camping on.

But the network's 3G base towers did not shut down, so those calls got lost along the way.

"Some devices … attempted to make emergency calls via those [3G] towers (rather than look to camp on to another network), even though no mobile service was being supplied by the Optus network," the report said.

...

The recommendations include:

• Obligate telcos to shut down their towers during outages, allowing triple-0 calls to be carried by other networks
• Establish a "Triple Zero custodian" whose sole responsible is to make sure the system is working
• Force telcos to share real-time information about outages with emergency services organisations and authorities
• Force telcos to file a timely post-mortem on major outages to the regulator and the government — including what caused it and steps being taken to resolve it, with a clear and detailed timeline
• Review the government's contract with Telstra to run the triple-0 system, with any changes to be made within a year
• Introduce an industry-wide approach to responding to consumers affected by large-scale outages
• Establish an agreement between telcos requiring them to help each to manage and resolve outages
• Review all legislation and regulation relating to triple-0

For Murrawah Johnson, the impacts of the climate crisis and the destruction of land to mine the fossil fuels that drive it are more than simple questions of atmospheric physics or environmental harm.

“What colonisation hasn’t already done, climate change will do in terms of finalising the assimilation process for First Nations people,” the 29-year-old Wirdi woman from Queensland says.

“[It is] totally destroying our ability to maintain a cultural identity, cultural existence and to be able to pass that on.”

Johnson is one of seven global winners of the prestigious Goldman prize for environmental activism – described as the Nobel for the environment movement - announced at a ceremony in San Francisco.

My mate works for an Indian company and got WFH forever. I was in shock because I never thought any company can give a work from home option forever ? Does any Australian company gives you such an option ? If so, please name those companies and job titles so that I can start applying for jobs there.

Feels bad man